pretty dumb things

BLE & me

I received word from Tristan Taormino that my story "Stuck at Work and Late for a Date" will be in her Best Lesbian Erotica 2009. It's kind of nice to have a story a) published, b) published twice and c) published in a best of anything. That it's a story originally chosen by Rachel Kramer Bussel for her anthology Yes, Sir! Stories of Female Submission was the cupcake and that it was picked by Tristan is the icing on it. You can go to Amazon to visit the book until such time as you can hold it in your hott, hott little hands, or you can simply buy the story in its original RKB-edited incarnation.

Speaking of which, the collection will be available at some point in November of this year, and it will include the following scintillating stories by the following luminous authors:

The Virgin of G Jean Casse
The Diner on the Corner Zaedryn Meade
Operation Butch Ambush Tawanna Sullivan
Bait and Switch Nairne Holtz
Park Sex Jessica Swafford
Spike Jodi Payne
Punk Love Victoria Gimpelevich
Lipstick on Her Collar Sacchi Green
Dream Date Radclyffe
On Snow-White Wings Shanna Germain
Tough Enough to Wear a Dress Teresa Noelle Roberts
A Night at the Opera Evan Mora
Please (Act III) Linda Suzuki
Hard to Get Rachel Kramer Bussel
Waiting Dylynn DeSaint
The Placement of Modifiers Jean Roberta
Velvet by Lisabet Sarai
Stuck at Work and Late for a Date Chelsea G. Summers
Bandanna Kiss by Moxzi Lantana
Flipping the Script D. Alexandria
The Breaking Point Lucinda L. Flanary
The Christmas Gift Thea Leticia
Blade, Ink, Steel Sharon Wachsler
Beneath the Carpet is the Floor Anna Watson

It's all really very groovy. I love getting paid validation.

they shoot dogs, don't they?

I wrote the following piece a few years ago and for a stupefyingly boring set of reasons had to take it down. I kind of like this post, so I'm reheating it and serving it up again, like yummy leftovers from last night's dinner party. Without further ado, here it is:

I want to tell you about how they shot my dog.

For a commercial.

My dog, Boswell, is a mutt of mixed and questionable herding extraction. A year and a half old, he is small and blue and always justthisside of mania. Mostly what he is is ridiculously cute. And smart. He’s like the short cute guy who sat in the back of the class and never really did as well as he could have on tests but always got the lead in Pygmalion and Our Town and managed to score with hot chicks even though he was only 5’5’’ and you were pretty sure he was on drugs.

That’s my dog, Boswell.

My dogrun friend DaisyDuke who designs sets for visual media was designing a series of sets for a line of toys and hooked Bozzie up with the producers who needed a handful of muttastic dogs for a commercial. I figured it was high time one of my pets could kick back to the family coffers and sent his photos to the producers.

They picked him. “He just has to be a dog,” they said on the phone.

He can do that, I told them. He’s very good at being a dog.

“We mean that he doesn’t have to do any special tricks.” They said not laughing.

Cool. My dog doesn’t know any.

“Don’t wash him,” they said, “he needs to look like a stray.”

So not a problem. I’m excellent at not washing things.

Friday the van came and picked up Bozzie and me, as well as the other two women and their two mutts from the dogrun in Washington Square Park. The other women were lovely, dark creatures with more or less conventional lives and much much prettier bank accounts than my own. They both lived with their respective, respectful boyfriends and they both had the presence of mind to bring reading material with them. They both had an instant rapport with one another.

They recognized each other for what they were, and probably recognized me for what I am not. Normal, maybe.

They both babytalked to their dogs, who looked alike. Both tan mutts, one looked like a mini-Benji, while the other looked like a stretch limo version of Benji. They were cute in a scruffy, scraggly terrier kind of way.

Bozzie and I were the one of these things that did not look like the other.

The soundstage where we were shooting squatted in Brooklyn somewhere near the docks and the industrial sections doing some kind of industry. The van pulled in front, we filed out, walked to the doorway of the low grey exterior, and entered a Victorian library.

At least on the left was the reception area that looked exactly like a Victorian library with endless rows of old books, dark wood and brass lamps shaded with big glass baubles.

That was to the left. In front, however, was a staircase that looked like the entrance to a Klingon nightclub. To the right was a 1930s subway car. Which turned out to be the waiting area.

We and our dogs were ushered into the subway car by Alex, the production coordinator, who looked not a little bit like the David Spade “and you are…” SNL character. We and our dogs were given water and snacks. We and our dogs were told to wait.

Wait we did.

DaisyDuke, my dogrun friend, showed up shortly after we arrived in her trademark plunging neckline, bosoms billowing like soap bubbles, and high heels. She builds sets in deep V-necklines and high heels. You have to respect that.

I do.

“Hi, honey,” she said and planted a kiss on my cheek.

This place is fantastic, I said. It’s like sex theme rooms.

“They shoot porn here,” DaisyDuke says, and I look around at the 1930s subway car and think of my many public transportation fantasies. All I need is a pair of handcuffs and a willing man…

I don’t doubt it, I say. “I can get you in here after hours,” she says.

Dang. The possibilities multiply.

DaisyDuke shows Boz and me around. The dressing rooms are all minisets. There’s a medieval chapel, a submarine, a tiki room, a Japanese bath, a pueblo. Upstairs, after the Klingon nightclub staircase, comes an Egyptian hallway, a conference room that looks like Neanderthals had designed the Enterprise, and a lunch room that looks like a Polynesian jungle, complete with a rolling thunderstorm and bird noises.

I see the soundstage that is vast, one part a greenscreen baseball field, the other a suburban livingroom.

We go back to the subway car and wait. And wait. The dogs play. I attempt to chat with the other dogmommies. I wander from dressingroom to dressingroom and try to take compromising pictures of myself with my cameraphone, imagining myself bent over the submarine’s bunks, chained to the chapel’s torchiers, bound suspended above the Japanese tub.

It passes the time.

The director and his entourage roll through at one point, breaking the monotony in the wait. He points at Bozzie and says, “This is the one that will jump out of a trash can?”

Uh. Sure. I say. News to me.

We wait.

Eventually one dog is called. She goes out with her dogmommy. She returns and it’s Bozzie’s time. We are led through the maze of the back of the soundstage, carpeted at times with grass, linoleum or bare dirt. Trees flower improbably over our heads in the darkness. There is a grey stalagmite sitting on its side.

We exit the stage and go into the backlot. A flurry of activity, people with clipboards and no discernable occupation mill about, adjusting garbage to make the lot look more realistically like an alleyway. It’s chaos with a camera.

“What do you think?” some man calls out, “do we need some color? What about this bottle for color?” He places a dented 7-Up bottle behind the artfully tipped trashcan.

The director turns to me and tells me that he want Boz to emerge from the trashcan. Do I think he can do that? He asks.

Sure, I say. My dog’s a method actor. What’s his motivation?

Turns out, it’s chicken.

Bozzie scarfs chicken from the can like a feral hound, but he won’t enter it, so we fake it and have him lie down behind it and then run out. Each take, I have to lift him up and carry him back to his place, make him lie down, feed him some chicken, have him stay as I go back to my place by the camera, and then call him to me.

He does really really well. He even, when the director wants to get that money shot, hops out of a trashcan on cue.

I’m shocked, frankly. I mean, this is a dog who makes me run after him to leave the dogrun.

Before we leave we see the prototype of the product, Stray Muttz; they are floppy scruffy dog toys. Tan and wiry-haired, with cute buttonblack eyes and noses, they actually look a lot like the two Benji wannabes.

“There’s a grey one too,” someone assures me, “who looks like Boz.”

rejected

The Very Large Publishing House has rejected my proposal, despite it being exactly the book idea that made the two editors I met with last February perk up like energetic spaniels who just scented a squirrel. I'm going to go crawl into a very large tumbler of something assertively alcoholic, thereby completing my turn as a cliché.

my favorite things/things that don't suck

From frocks to films, from mousse to mice, from hot wings to icy bling, life can be terribly disappointing. Most of us are not a) rock stars b) supermodels c) rock-star supermodels d) superstars or e) rock models. (And those of us who are rock models find the reality to be really rather underwhelming.) It’s simply shocking how rarely we grow up and embody the international jet-setting Bob-Mackie-dress-studded life we thought we’d have when we watched the Sonny and Cher Show. So often in life, our expectations simply are not met. It’s sad-making, really.

Fortunately, every once in a while I find that I stumble across stuff that, in the life-affirming words of Nomi Malone “don’t suck” (for the record, Showgirls, the film from which those words originate, does in fact suck. However, it sucks so hard that it actually goes around the bend and comes around to a Zen-like state of complete non-suckage. It’s like the movie had a stroke, lost its right brain, and found its bliss—and in the 131 minute run time, so do you). In the interest of you, my fair readers, I want to take this moment to share with you some of these things, my favorite things, Things That Don’t Suck.

1) Philosophy Skin Care. I don’t know about you, but my skin has the sensitivity of an only child hitting puberty in a new school. My skin is, quite simply, as often in a state of revolt as eighteenth-century French peasants. If my skin could steal my bread and decollate my head, it would. In a heartbeat.

I have a very hard time finding skin products that don’t give me the skin of your pizza delivery dude, and as often as I remind myself that as long as I’m getting zits, I’m not getting wrinkles, I can’t soothe myself. After trying multiple brands of often super-expensive skin crap, I have, however found one that works: Philosophy. The cleaner is light and effective, the cream fluffy and softening, the peel system satisfyingly gritty. I can’t say I never break out now, but I can say that I break out less often and the skin around my zits looks and feels fabulous. Thumbs up on Philosophy. It might not make you look as hott as Søren Kierkegaard, but it might make feel that way. (Available at Sephora, Philosophy online, and other spendy cosmetics stores.)

2) If you can’t afford Philosophy all the time—and, really, who can—Cetaphil cleanser is the low-cost bomb. It’s relatively cheap, non-comedogenic, and available everywhere. The label says that you don’t have to use water with it, though I always do because it seems faintly gross to opt against water. Smooth, smell-free and vaguely comforting, Cetaphil also works really nicely to clean one’s most intimate bits.

3) And while I’m at skin care on the cheap, the Arm & Hammer Baking soda that’s sitting in your kitchen cupboard makes a simply astounding exfoliants. Just put some in the palm of your hand, add a bit of water to create a paste, gently rub on the skin of your choice and rinse. You’ll have lovely, fresh, bump-free skin. Not only does the grittiness of the baking soda work to slough off dead skin, but the pH of baking soda acts on your skin like nicotine in the lungs of a smoker: just as nicotine works either as a stimulant or a sedative, depending on what the smoker needs, so does baking soda act to balance out alkaline or acidic environments. You don’t have to use specifically Arm & Hammer, but it does have the best packaging. (These two puppies are pretty much ubiquitous. Go wherever you go and buy some.)

4) the njoy eleven: I first got my njoy eleven on Boxing Day, so I’ve now had almost six months of it before the toy was available for public consumption. Now that we’re nearing the release date, let me reiterate: njoy eleven is super-great.

Seriously. It’s almost three pounds of pure steel joy. Get yourself on the waiting list for one now. (Available from njoy toys online, Babeland, and other fine retailers of adult implements.)

5) Goji Berries: Supposedly these are the most nutritionally dense and highest anti-oxidant food on this wet, blue planet.  Supposedly these berries, grown in the Himalayas in Tibet, have polysaccharides that support the immune system and stimulate the body’s production of HGH. Also, supposedly buying these berries helps economically troubled Tibet. I’ve been eating the prescribed handful every day for the last couple of months and, while mine is a highly subjective study, I think I feel a little better. Anyway, goji berries taste ok, and eating them can’t hurt. If these odd but pleasant tasting berries are good enough for ancient Tibetans, they're good enough for me. (Available at health food stores. I buy mine at GojiBerry.com)

6) Dr. Katz Therabreath Products: I hate bad breath with an extra-flamey white-hot burning passion; therefore, I wave a big foam finger for Dr. Katz’s slightly esoteric line of dental care. I admit that it’s not the best tasting dental product line on the planet, and that Dr. Katz’s literature and visage have an inherent freaksome cultish element to them, and that it’s all way more expensive than any dental care products have a right to be, but fuck me with your consenting adult nephew if these products don’t work really, really well. Plus, they’re natural and free of bad-for-you additives like saccharine and sodium laurel sulfate. If you hate that weird low-tide lobster shell taste of morning breath as I do, use Dr, Katz. (Available at Therabreath online and most likely your health-and-beauty-aid stores)

7) Lip Fusion: I am an abject devotee of the plain, no-color, original, ostensibly-too-expensive-but-somehow-worth-it Lip Fusion lip goo. I strongly do not like the colored stuff or the XL version or any of the other of the long line of infomercially enhanced Fusion products, but the original one is A-OK. It hydrates, it lasts, and it may just plump my lips a tiny bit, but without any weird tingling side effect. It costs way too much money, but Lip Fusion remains a staple in my morning routine. Lip Fusion is kind of like Starbucks coffee:  I wish I didn’t love/need it so much, but I do. (If you can deal with the startlingly awful infomercial, you can buy it at Fusion online. I myself go to Sephora.)

I wish I could tell you right now as Oprah does to look under your chair to find a gift bag of all of today’s products, but I can’t. Maybe someday. We can dream.

And then we can find other ways to fill our preoccupied abstracted days while we pointlessly worry about the fate of our manuscript at the VLPH.

a book proposed

Today, I emailed my book proposal to my agent, who has been just lovely to me.

It's a strange, strange thing to propose a book. But now I've done and gone and proposed and sent my book-to-be out into the world like a new hatchling. My little fuzzy bookling is now in my agent's capable, virtual hands, and he'll tell me what, if anything, I need to do to it to make it marketable, which is a weird concept in and of itself. It's all very odd, and now I think I might go breathe heavily into a paper bag for about fifteen minutes until the room ceases its pointless spinning.

Just thought I'd share.

kissykiss,
chelsea g.

a dirty girl on Dirty Girls

Ok, true confession time: I don’t really like much erotica. I find it rather boring. All that insert-tab-A-into-slot-B interlocking of body parts. All those ubiquitous, predictably long-legged, ruby-lipped, tumescently membered, achingly pussied, roseately nippled clichés invariably cause me to grow a big, rubbery one, which is quite at cross purposes to the whole point of erotica.

Erotica—like comedy, like political speeches, like advertisements—has just one over-arching aim; it, like those other genres of writing, is supposed to elicit a single very strong reaction. Just as comedy that makes you laugh is successful, and comedy that doesn’t isn’t, erotica that makes you frisky is, and that which doesn’t isn’t. But just like comedy that makes you think—or political speeches, or advertisements, or any other genre that supercedes its generical limits—when erotica can make you feel something in addition to frisky, that is when it’s transcendent.

Dirty Girls, edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel and recently published by Seal Press, does that, at least once, and even when it’s just down-and-dirty, terrestrial erotica, it’s still pretty sublime.

The abstract concept of Dirty Girls is a pretty swell premise for an erotica collection. Historically, girls who are openly sexual have often been both castigated and paradoxically elevated because of their sexuality. As a culture, we are preoccupied with dirty girls; we are like William Faulkner to Caddy’s muddy drawers, forever staring up at some girl’s dirty panties and finding inspiration and excitation twinned with fascination and revulsion. Because a bunch of women writers writing a bunch of naughty prose is never just a bunch of women writing, the title Dirty Girls has inherent in it a sly recognition of its own significance. You kind of have to respect that knowingness, and you kind of have to respect the design of the book, replete with fingerprints, like we readers are already complicit in touching it, ourselves, and the dirty act therein.

It’s quite clever, really.

Beyond the simple premise, the book is a great, big heaving mass of prose that, like the best of burlesque shows, comes in a wide array of shapes, sizes, sexual proclivities and aesthetic styles. It’s like an erotic smorgasbord; there’s going to be some dish that will appeal to you, whether it’s the earthiness of Tsaurah Litzky’s coke-sniffing, bathroom-humping waitresses; the biliotaphic, ecdysiast fantasies of Carol Queens’ virgin girl’s day out to the Lusty Lady; the oneiric poetry of an older artist and a younger man of Suki Bishop; or Allison Tyler’s sly exploration of the pleasure of being a putative “good girl.”

My favorite piece is Shanna Germain’s “Until It’s Gone.” I like my erotica to work in many senses—and Germaine’s story evokes the garlicky sizzle of cooking, the cow-shit scent of leather, the salty somatic push and pull of sexual release, and the bittersweet twang of lost love. It’s just a pretty-ass piece of writing; it’s also terribly hott-making.

I think I can speak for any woman who has ever been called a “dirty girl” that it’s nice to see us getting our just deserts, our pleasurable amuse-gueules. And whether these nods take the form of an literary paean to cocksucking (Melissa Gira), opera-house fingering (Maddy-Stuart) or anonymous sex (too many to name) or a literal one somehow seems to matter less and less.

Dirty Girls is available at Amazon.com and wherever fine fucking fiction is sold.

the best hundred bucks i never spent; or lelo's gigi vibe, a review

Like a member of Oprah’s audience, one of my favorite things is getting free stuff. Free stuff is pretty awesome, especially when it’s free stuff that comes to me because I write this blog. Being a writer of a blog with—but not necessarily of—sex, I most often get free stuff that takes the form of books and sex toys. Being that books and sex toys are among some of the objects that bring me the most pleasure (others being Frye boots, shamefully expensive purses, and a limited array of cosmetics and beauty products), I find it simply superswell that people who make sex toys and write books want to send me the fruit of their respective loins.

Most recently, I was sent a vibrator. I like vibrators, I like them a lot. I find them to be extraordinarily helpful little tools, and when they actually do what they’re supposed to do—pleasure my clit and/or g-spot—they’re just lovely. The really sad thing about vibrators is often they don’t do what they’re supposed to do. Nothing is more heartbreaking than buying a vibe, gleefully carrying it home, joyfully unwrapping it, exultantly washing it, excitedly playing with it, and then sorrowfully discovering that it sucks. It’s really a soul-crashing experience because not only have you wasted money, but you’ve dashed your hopes for a long and lasting orgasmic relationship that doesn’t involve other people’s wet spots.

I have finicky genitals. They are high-maintenance, high-strung, highly neurotic lady parts. My clit, as I’ve said, is like Greta Garbo: beautiful, yes, but also rather stupid and self-important. My genitals are something the rest of my body fawns over and caters to. They are as demanding as Mariah Carey’s performance rider. My clit is a diva, and it’s really rather tiresome. I can’t tell you how many toys I’ve bought only to use them once and leave them to gather disgusted dust in some bag or other. Vibrators, in particular, have oft been relegated to the sex-toy graveyard.

Therefore, when companies offer to send me things, I always tell them that I will accept their object on the condition that I can be white-light honest in my appraisal of said object. It’s best when the object is like an njoy toy, for then I can simply espouse my unfettered love of said object with the extra flamey, white-hot burning passion that I feel. Rare, however, is that the case.

Fortunately for me, my diva genitals, and LELO, the most recent object sent to me—LELO’s Gigi vibe—is one I can rave about nearly unabashedly. It’s just a damn fine vibrator.

I have to admit that Sweden’s LELO is not one of the companies that had garnered much more than passing notice from me. It all just seemed really twee to me. The designs were all too much like flowers, the colors were all too pastel, the names of the toys were too feminine, and the shapes were just a little too limpid to have the power that appeals to me. Plus, they were really, really spendy. I mean, I just can’t justify spending $100 on a vibe when I don’t absolutely, positively know it’s going to work for me and my genitals. I’d seen the toys in shops and online, but I’d not seriously thought about buying one.

But when Ana from LELO emailed me and offered me one, I naturally said yes (see above: free stuff). I was, however, skeptical. I didn’t put a whole lot of faith in anything that pink, that pistil-shaped, or that abjectly girly.

Gigi, the vibe that LELO sent me, is according to LELO’s website a “pleasure object for the discerning G-spot connoisseur [and] carefully sculpted to unlock the secrets of this mysterious and special place.” This copy didn’t really inflate my hopes. My g-spot doesn’t need unlocking as much as it needs precise stimulation. But, on the other hand, there were things that inherently appealed to me about the Gigi—it’s cordless, rechargeable,  programmed with a handful of settings, and lightweight. When the box arrived one afternoon, I was ready to set aside my prejudices and put the thing through its paces.

Having done so a couple of times now, I have to hand it to those Swedes. The Gigi is a grand object indeed. It’s pretty sweet without being sugary. It’s easy to charge and easy to clean. It’s small, but powerful. Its various settings give enough a variety of sensation and strength. It works well on the prescribed g-spot because it’s curved pretty ergonomically. However, that said, I do like the vibe best on my clit because—and this is pretty genius—it’s flat on the pulsating end. And what a difference a plane makes.

Most vibrators are curved on the end. This design makes sense because it hurts to insert objects with corners. However, the curve means that you can’t place the vibe flat against your clit, which given that flatness gives you the most contact is really rather sad. The Gigi, however, is flat as a pre-Socratic Pythagorean earth. And, quite frankly, it’s genius.

The vibrations of the Gigi have a subtle consistency. Neither too seismic nor too even, the Gigi’s vibrations hum along at a fairly perfect pitch. That said, the hard plastic handle can get a bit slippery with lube, and the control pad that most approximates a second-generation iPod can be hard to navigate in the heat of the moment. And as much as I like the Gigi on my clit—and I do, really, really, like totally a lot—I’m less enthused with it on my g-spot. It’s fine, but nothing special on the inside. It’s wild red-hott-makingness on the out.

Which brings us to the final question: is the LELO Gigi worth $109? Yes, I think it is, as long as you aren’t going to go hungry/into debt/dip into your rent money/or take food out of your dog's mouth. Let’s face it: this is luxury item, no doubt about it. And while orgasms are not a luxury but a basic human right, we humans don’t necessarily need hundred-dollar toys to give them to us. That said, it’s awfully nice when they do.

Lelo vibes of all makes are available at their website, but also at Babeland, both in the virtual and in the real worlds.

we have a winner!

It was a tough field of competition for the My Buddy contest. There were so many worthy applicants, from orgy-having bisexuals, to an arthritic newly separated woman, to a non-arthritic newly separated man, to an AIDS activist toyless lesbian, to many needy others. There was no way I could choose one of you: I love all my readers equally. So I turned the matter over to the head office at My Buddy, and after 36 hours of intense debate, the good people at My Buddy chose one lucky winner, the woman who wrote this email:

I'd like a chance to win the My Buddy system.  I don't have anything exceptionally clever to say that would convince you that I'm the perfect candidate for this set.  I'm a navy wife of 7 years and I've spent nearly four of those years with hubby deployed.  A toy like that could certainly help drive away the sexual stagnation that comes along with deployments. I love my hand, but quite frankly, I think it gets tired of me...or just gets tired.  ;)  Apparently my mind has more energy to produce fantasies than my hand has to carry them out.

Congrats, to you, dear reader, may your fantasies never be outstripped again.

somewhere between my acquaintance and my buddy

As much I love self-love, I have a vexed relationship with my Hitachi Magic Wand™, something that I have not kept secret. In sex-positive press and in porn, the Hitachi gets treated like the second coming, but when I use it, I feel like I’m using something from the Black & Decker erotic division. It’s ugly. It’s unwieldy. It’s overly powerful; its vibrations could just about rattle Gotham concrete into fragments. For me to use it with any success, I have to wad several layers of fabric between its inscrutably nubbly knob and my tender-flower girl parts.

When I do use it, I employ it like the household appliance of love. My Hitachi provides a shorter journey between an orgasm and me. It’s not quality that counts; it’s efficiency. The Hitachi acts like an electric mixer. Sure, I could get the same results, perhaps even better, if I whipped the cream by hand, but why bother? The Hitachi isn’t about art; it’s about speed. And because I use it over hermetically-sealed genitals, I don’t have to clean it at all. I like that.

Given my unabashed ambivalence about the Hitachi, I was surprised when the good people behind the company My Buddy offered to send me a full kit to try out. After all, it’s not like I’m currently waving the big foam finger for the Magic Wand, so it’s unlikely that I’d be waving it with any more fervency when it was accessorized by the full pantheon of My Buddy goods—a big pillow that holds the wand, a box that controls the wand, covers for the pillow that hold the wand, silicone nubbly attachments that fit on the wand, and a wand. Not dissuaded by my tepid response, Dr. Buddy sent me enthusiastic emails and a big box of My Buddy stuff post-haste.

Sheathed in pink Lycra, my My Buddy looks like something a very perverted Easter bunny might leave before hippity-hopping his way to an orgy. It’s a big pillow, and oddly shaped. It kind of looks like a Honda Prius with side cars winging out on either side. Presumably, the sidecars give you a place to buttress your knees either fore or aft, depending on which way the pillow faces—Prius grill toward sternum or Prius grill toward pudendum. I also received a black Lycra cover, I’m guessing for those days when I’m feeling more AC/DC than “Stupid Girls.”

I say “presumably” because I have yet to use the pillow. There’s something about threading the wand through the pillow, readying the whole kit and caboodle, positioning my nethers over it correctly, and then humping it with Dionysian abandon that feels indecorous to me. I can’t quite bring myself to masturbate with all that gear. Even though the only beings who’d see me are my pets, I am stymied by free-floating and inexplicable shame. So the pillow, and its extra cover, remain wrapped in their plastic bags. Being of a filthy and busy mind, I can visualize the pillow’s utility in enhancing Doggystyle; however, I can’t go there yet.

While the actual Buddy part of the My Buddy system remains firmly in the speculative realm, I can absolutely vouch for the Radio Shack-style controller. It’s not a pretty thing, the controller—it’s certainly not an erotic thing, unless you get hot and bothered by R/C model planes, not that there’s anything wrong with that. It looks like a primitive-generation Flux Capacitor. That said, the thing works. If, like me, you find the vibration of a Hitachi or Hitachi-style wand overkill, this controller dials it down to just enough kill. Not only does one setting work to tame the savage Hitachi beast, but the other setting also creates this neat vibrato effect. I personally like the vibration change-ups. This little box does that well. I must give the mad, chunky props to this little black box. It won’t make the wand an elegant tool, but it will make it vastly more pleasurable.

In the interest of full disclosure, I haven’t used the nubby attachment things yet because I would have to wash them and, frankly, I can’t be bothered.

Which is to say that this all ends up being a very partial partial review. I admit my reticence to embrace  the Hitachi way of life. I admit my skittishness of humping the pillow. I admit  my gritty envisioning of how the pillow could be beneficial. I admit not having utilized the full array of products. And I admit that the while the Radio-Shack-style box is hella-ugly, it is also hella-useful. If you have a wand and hate it, your opinion will change with this box. I’m confident of it.

So here’s the deal, the good Dr. Buddy is offering a full Buddy Boudoir set for one of my lucky readers. If you want to win the set worth around $200, just email me or leave a comment telling me why you should win the box. Give me something good, something witty, something honest, something erotic, or just some pretty-ass piece of writing, and you might receive a complimentary set of My Buddy products including the confounding pillow, the Lycra cover, the lovely box, the silicone attachments and the wand, delivered in a discreet brown box to his or her address. You could be the lucky, lucky winner.  Just tell me something—anything, but make it clever—by Tuesday next, 11 March.

If you can't wait to win, or don't want to chance it, you can buy My Buddy online here.

yes, sir, that's my story; no, sir, it isn't boring

It's nearly March, and the Rachel Kramer Bussel edited erotic anthology Yes, Sir! Erotic Stories of Male Dominance is ready to be published. Not only does it include my story, "Stuck at Work and Late for a Date," but it also includes stories from Alison Tyler, Gwen Masters, Shanna Germain, and fifteen other splendid authors, including Rachel herself.

It's always exciting for me to see my words in print, but it's much more exciting when  I know my words are getting others excited too. It's like a water-cycle of excitation. It's like The Pointer Sisters are poised to sing everywhere, around the globe, and naked as they wait, or maybe clad in nothing but a few spots of latex and painfully high heels, and all you need to do is buy the book to set them off into song.

Something like that, anyway, only a lot less scary and much more erotic.

You can buy the book at Amazon, and if you need a bit more seduction than that cover and my prose, the book has a blog here.

super tuesday: the results

“These things must be handled dee-lih-cat-ly,” says the Wicked Witch when she tries to remove the ruby slippers from Dorothy’s feet.

Many of you have emailed me to ask how the meeting went on Tuesday. A couple of you have left comments wanting the same. And I want to tell you in full, explicit, breathy detail, I really do. I want to give you the blow-by-blow, the color commentary, the dizzying rallies, the confounding falls, the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat. I want nothing as much as to express to you in glittering detail the landscape of my feelings. I want to recount to you bon mots, spilled soup, and flaky crumbs. I want to tilt your heads back like a flock of baby birds and spill into your gullets the wines I drank.

I can’t.

And this feeling of having a log jam of things I want to write about, want desperately to express on the page, to share and therefore to feel relieved of (as well as perhaps relived of), but for some confluence of reasons being unable to do so, is a feeling with which I’m growing infinitely familiar. There are things I want to give up with the pure, liberating freedom of a maidenhead, and I can’t. It would be imprudent, I find. It would be poor judgment, I realize. It would do more harm than good, I know, and so I don’t.

It’s way, way harder than you might imagine. Things left unsaid seethe and boil and froth and turn rank. I tell my friends, but it’s not the same. I don’t really ever unbosom myself of anything unless I write it. Which may be why I’m a writer, but then again it may just be because I’m a pretentious empurpled twit with more solipsism than sense.

As much as I want to spill the entire pot of cannelloni, I must forbear because one of the two editors I met reads this blog. I cannot, then, write with unbridled freedom. It’s not that I don’t like her—I actually do, especially her shoes, which were these 1940’s style pumps of leopard print—it’s more that until the deal is signed,  sealed and delivered, it’s probably best to play these things close to the vest or chest or breast or whatever.

Here’s what I can tell you. They didn’t like the first book I pitched, a book whose title and premise I love, and a book that I had planned out in my head. They both listened patiently; they both tented their fingers; in their foreheads, twin vertical lines signifying concentration appeared; they both asked intelligent questions.

Sitting across from them, I had this feeling that what I was saying was being perceived in the book editor’s version of dogspeak. Instead of hearing, “Blah, blah, blah, bone. Blah, blah, blah, Scruffy. Blah, blah, blah, go out for a walk, blah, blah, Scruffy,” they heard, “Blah, blah, blah, feminism. Blah, blah, blah, strip clubs. Blah, blah, blah, pole-dancing, blah, blah, blah Susan Faludi.” Alas.

So at the end of my relatively articulate speech, they looked at each other and asked, “Who do you see as the audience for this book?” At which point, I knew I’d struck out worse than A-Rod in any post-season game.

So I then turned to book idea #2, which they seemed to love. Their eyes got spaniel bright. If they had tails, they would have wagged.  So I’m going to work on a proposal for it. In an idyllic world, I'll finish it in a month.

That would be the highly edited version of the story. I liked the two editors, I love my ebullient friend who made the lunch possible. I’m excited about the book. And that is all I can say on the matter at present, because somewhere along the line, I actually started to grow up and find an eternal editor who doesn’t need to take inopportune cigarette breaks. I kind of miss my old, smoking editor, the one who clearly drank too much Johnny Walker and had the salty mouth of Walter Winchell. I suppose you do too, but then sometimes things really do need to handled delicately as undergarments.

blow jobs are (nearly) front-page news

Here you go, a screenshot of my most recent Penthouse output. It's the article that I mused/fretted about here, as I was writing it during a sex drought. I really, really like the graphics for this piece--the other accompanying illustration is a close-up of a face of classic blow-up doll, mouth agape in wonder and readiness, and you have to respect the classics.

Although I like looking at the pictures, I almost never read my own edited writing because it makes me want to jab those little plastic knives they stick cocktail onions on in airport bars into my solar plexus. This is no exception, and while I only read the first couple of lines, I want to put on record that the joke with which I opened the piece is not my favorite joke. My favorite joke goes like this: So a Buddhist goes to a hot-dog vendor and says, "Make me one with everything."

My second favorite joke goes like this: What do you call a dyslexic insomniac agnostic? Someone who stays up all night wondering if there really is a dog.

Click--not lick--to embiggen the image. And if you buy the article, out on newsstands right now in the March issue of Penthouse, send me an email to tell me how you like it.

super tuesday

Tomorrow is a very big day. It’s the sort of day that could change lives forever. It’s a defining day in that it could absolutely make or break, and yet the possibility for a less black-and-white result lingers. It could be a stumble along the journey, a clear and definite victory, or the end. We won’t know until it’s over.

Tomorrow, you see, I am meeting with two editors from a publishing house. I big publishing house. An imprint of Random House, to be exact. Tomorrow, in a meeting set up by a friend, over a good Italian lunch and great Italian wine, I am pitching my book to two editors, one the Executive Editor of this particular imprint of Random House, the other the editor he wants me to work with. My friend, who has a memoir on bookshelves next month, has shown his editor my writing; he liked it; and now we have a meeting.

Currently, I am just about vibrating with a burbling mixture of anticipation and nerves. By tomorrow morning, I’ll be able to mix paint with my nervous energy, although it’s been a slow slog to this level of “I’m so excited/I just can’t hide it/I’m about to lose control/ and I yadda yadda yadda.” When the meeting first was set last Friday, I received the news with all the visible emotion of a caryatid.

“What’s the matter? You’re not excited,” my friend said. He sounded bitterly disappointed. I think he expected a whoop or a squeal or at least a w00t.

I am excited, I said evenly. This is me excited.

“You don’t sound excited.” He paused. “What’s wrong with you? You’ve got a book deal.”

Empirically minded as I am, I remain superstitious. Like my Puritan ancestors who didn’t praise the beauty of their children for fear that their praise would doom the excessively beautiful child to an early grave, I fear investing too much in a gorgeous egg  unhatched. I don’t want to jinx anything with an emotional reaction, so I stay blank as Hindu cattle in the face of news that would send my emotive friend into exuberant orbit.

I come from a long line of dour and pessimistic people, I said to my friend. Don’t rush things, I told him. He eventually gave up in exasperation and hung up the phone.

He’s gratified to know that today the excitation has set in, and as I prepare for the meeting—tweaking my title, writing outlines, practicing pitching it in the shower—this grand balloon seems to be swelling in my solar plexus. An unstable balloon, a balloon I feel reticent to trust, but a big swelling, cheery red balloon nonetheless.

Tomorrow is a big day. A really big day. It might decide my future, or it might just be a bump along the way. I won’t know until later.

And, oh yeah. I’m also voting. If you live in New York as I do, or if you live in Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, or Utah, you should too. It's just a really, really big day all over.

my Hitachi Magic Wand™ and me

I have, in the past four months, achieved a grudging respect for my Hitachi Magic Wand™. When my now-completely-and-unquestionably-X, Donny, bought it for me a year and a half ago, I didn’t like my Hitachi Magic Wand™, and to be completely honest, I’m not entirely certain that my dislike of it has changed. And Yet I do admit, however hesitantly, that I do use it. My Hitachi Magic Wand™ has become a fixture in my bedroom, if not in my life.

in which little miss morph-a-lot fails

Sadly, the book deal for the book that was to be my first book, although not my book but a book written by me, has gone south. Suffice to say that it was no one’s fault; I wanted more money; they wanted to give me less; we couldn’t agree on numbers; life goes on.

Though I can’t spill the whole pot of bubbling beans, the book in question was a collection of erotica written centered on the employees of a business this particular corporation would like to be known as “an upscale gentleman’s club,” but which I would term simply a strip club or, were I in a sassier frame of mind, a “titty bar.” It was, essentially, a book that splayed its fictionally tanned, toned thighs across the Venn diagram of erotica, journalism and corporate branding. The book’s agent, the corporation in question and I all agreed that I, being both a former “entertainer,” a writer of erotic fiction and an occasional journalist, would be perfect for the project.

As it turned out, the project wasn’t perfect for me, or I should say that the money offered for the project was much less than perfect, and so I chose to walk. I wish the corporation, the agent, and all involved the best.

I’m sad about this loss, but this post is less about the travails of my first Book That Wasn’t and more abut how bone-vibratingly surreal it was for me to go to the club of corporation in question, meet with the club’s P.R. guy and the book’s agent, and talk with the various employees of the establishment/gentleman’s club/strip club. Because what I found when I stepped through those double doors and into the inescapable shuk-shuk-shuk bass-thrumming atmo of every titty bar between Bangor and Beijing, was that you can take the woman out of the strip club, but you can never take the stripper out of the girl.

going up to eleven on boxing day

I like stuff. Stuff is awesome. Some of my favorite stuff is, yeah, you got it, stuff. I’ve discussed my zealous love of books (and DVDs and legally downloaded music in hott, streaming MP3 form), a bibliotaphic love that approaches abibliophobia, giving yet more credence to the ideological love-child of Freud and Hegel: the concept that what we love is that which we fear and vice-versa.  I fucking love boots, especially Frye boots, and I love Very Important Handbags, especially Botkier bags. I love t-shirts, sweaters and soft, overpriced warm socks. I also love lip gloss; I mean I really love lip gloss.

I received several of the above items of stuff this Christmas from some of my favorite people. I like getting stuff I like from the people I like. More than gratifying my need for/love of the stuff itself, it makes me feel as if the people who love me really know me because they can accurately choose stuff I’ll like. They know what stuff speaks to me, and that choosing somehow materially testifies to their love.

Some of that stuff I kind of expected—because I find I do have to guide the people I love to the stuff I want, or else I end up with scarves. I have eleven scarves. All but two were presents. I like scarves a lot, and the scarves I received as gifts are all very nice. Eleven is enough scarves, so I admit providing some power of suggestion to the people who love me and want to give me things, but I stop short of naming exact presents to specific people (except for Donny who gets so tangled up in the anxiety of gift-buying that I have to give very detailed directions, or he’d  flounder and fail and then beat himself up unmercifully for months). I like surprises.

Which all is but a lexiphanic prologue to this statement: Greg of NJoy Toys must love me a lot. His love for me clearly goes up to eleven, because the stuff he gave me shows he knows me well, very well indeed.

ripped off by a douche

I love the idea of Intellectual Property. I love the concept that what I think and create from the sheer power of my own mind has an innate value, a value I can appreciate not merely from a purely subjective stance but also from a purely objective and empirical, pecuniary standpoint.  Even more than the idea of my intellect owning property, I love the reality built into the legal system in the form of copyright law that what I think and write belongs to me and to me alone, until such time I should choose to sell it to someone else. Intellectual Property, and its attendant laws, makes me feel as if I can sit back and look at all the great heaving mass of my writing and feel like I have created something as real, as tangible, and as valuable as a shopping center or an automobile.

As I’ve become more and more comfortable in this new skin of a writer, as I’ve more and more often gotten remuneration for my writing, and as I begin to see my future as a bright and shiny horizon of publication, I have come to take my writing more seriously. It is, after all, not merely the musing of my scattered mind, the emo off-gassing of a burdened psyche, or the busy work of a person who really should be doing something else; it is increasingly my livelihood. More and more, my writing puts food on my table, keeps a roof over my head, and buys me all those DVDs, Frye boots and books I need and love.

Therefore, I take it very personally indeed when I am plagiarized. A person who steals my writing is not merely stealing my words and my ideas; he or she is potentially stealing money from my bank account. A person who plagiarizes—and in the specific case of the plagiarism brought to my attention by an unknown reader last night, she—is doing more than just appropriating something that is not hers; she is also diluting my voice, reducing my ideas with her unethical appropriation, and taking credit for a creation that is not hers.

I recognize the praise implicit to someone stealing my writing. One doesn’t steal stuff that one doesn’t value, not unless one is more into the act of stealing than one is into the actual stolen goods. I know that the woman who lifted my post “so a girl walks into a bar…” did so because she felt impressed by my writing. Nonetheless, it angers me that she stole it, stole it willingly, and stole it so that others would read the post on her blog—edited of some difficult syntax, embellished by ellipses and increased in length by a Sex in the City quote—and think that she wrote as well as me, though she clearly does not. I recognize this blogger’s inherent appreciation of my writing, but it provides only some small cold comfort.

In other cultures, plagiarism doesn’t exist in quite the same way. In some Eastern traditions, notably Japanese painting and print-making, aspiring artists are encouraged to copy, to copy studiously, to copy copiously, and to copy until such time that they have reproduced every nuanced brush stroke with reverence to the original. This, however, is not the tradition of the West.

The tradition in the West, beginning with Hogarth’s Law enacted in England in 1735, a law that sprang from artist William Hogarth’s anger and frustration at having his prints ripped off by every immoral man with a printing press, gives legal weight to the person who created the reproducible art the exclusive rights to reproduce the art. When we sell a piece of art, be it music, writing, or visual, we sell our rights to reproduce it. When a person copies the art without attribution and/or payment, depending on the venue, she does so illegally.

The Internet has complicated copyright law. The Internet is, of course, a hot-and-cold running stream of writing and images. They seem free for the taking, and some of them are. I have no problem if someone uses a paragraph or more from my writing and gives me proper attribution. This kind of borrowing and citation is equivalent to when print writers cite other articles in their own pieces; plus with the immediacy of hyperlinks, my writing gets exposure that it might not get otherwise. If there’s attribution, there’s no copyright violation. If there isn’t, there is. But the Internet is so big, and growing every day, that policing plagiarism is nigh unto impossible.

I can even forgive new bloggers, people who don’t understand how to do hyperlinks, or haven’t been blogging long enough to know that when one borrows, one should give proper attribution. I have taught college on and off for years; teaching Freshmen what is and what is not plagiarism comes with the territory. Everyone should have the opportunity to learn from mistakes.

It’s another thing entirely, however, to not merely make a mistake in attribution but to steal piecemeal and then, as the blogger who plagiarized my piece did, act as if the writing is her own. Responding to comments that praised the writing of the stolen piece, this blogger said that she had “two sides” to her writing,  averred that she could “pull out the high-falutin’ vocabulary” when needed, and offered that she “would do more of this kind of editorial writing” if she had more time. The blogger in question is also a thirty-something year-old college student. It’s impossible that she didn’t know that what she was doing was wrong; it is, however, possible that she didn’t think she would get caught.

Plagiarism really hurts me. It makes me red spitting angry. Plagiarism in this Western culture is wrong. It is stealing. It is lying. It is unethical. And it is illegal. It is also a problem that is growing with the bloated urgency of J-Lo’s belly. To that end, let me do a little good and provide three links to help people like me who have found their work stolen, as well as help those of you from having your work stolen.

This link helps you to protect your work from plagiarism: How To Protect Your Website's Copyright When Someone Steals Your Content

And this one, for a small fee, helps you detect if it has been: Copyscape

(The title to this post comes from a common misconstruing of a lyric to "Blinded by the Light" copyright Bruce Springsteen, ASCAP.)

those sticky spots between the covers

I'm trying to get accustomed to shameless self-promotion. I'm not particularly good at it, being not so much a humble person as one who tends to diminish her accomplishments in the face of a superstitious fear that if I so much as utter their names they'll flicker and fall like the fickle blue flame of the Will-o'-the-wisp.

So please pardon my clumsy attempts to self-promote. (P.T. Barnum I'll never be. I was really a rather wretched stripper, for example. I made money more sheerly on my occasional forays into ridiculous beauty than from an innate ability to wrangle men into my fold. One friend, upon hearing of my ecdysiastic shoddiness, remarked that I did it for the art, which was sadly often the case.) However painful I find this horn tooting, I did just get business cards made, and they are cute.

Ok, so here's what's happening with me in the wonderful world of tangible media. First, my third article for Penthouse has been rewritten and accepted for publication in February. Soon, uncles across the country can thrill to my personal essay on cocksucking, and when their adolescent nephews discover the issue buried under their uncles' tube socks, they can too. I'm also pitching my fourth article to them for the March issue.

Second, I also received word from the legendary Susie Bright that she accepted my story "cold ass ice" for publication in her upcoming anthology of erotica, X, An Erotic Treasury, being published in December of 2008 by Chronicle books. A day later, I also received notice from the hardest working woman in publishing, Rachel Kramer Bussel, that my story "Stuck at Work and Late for a Date" had received final acceptance in her March 2008 anthology, Yes, Sir!, published by Cleis books.

Finally, I met my potential agent. He's very nice and supergeeky, and in complete opposition to what I was expecting, he was quite comfortingly rumpled and dressed in what looked like hipster Salvation Army wear (baby blue, argyle, v-neck). I'm feeling quite sanguine about him. Although I'm not yet signing with him, and although I can't yet announce the project, he is negotiating a book deal for me. It's not my first book, in that it's not my idea, but it is a first book, and that is pretty freaking exciting.

Anyway, just thought I'd share and now I'm going to cross my fingers, hop counter-clockwise in a circle and touch the nearest wood object in the fervent hopes that this is not all a dream.

to be filed under "funny to others"

Last week, just a few days after Donny had his major marriage malfunction, my mom came to visit me. This is a rare occurrence in my life; living for seventeen years in Gotham, I’ve had the pleasure of a visit from either of my parents exactly five times. Needless to say, the matriarchal visit necessitates some house-cleaning on my part, not the least of which is my gathering the sex toys from hither and yon, slipping any number of them into the many velvet and velveteen bags I have, stashing the roiling velvet-shrouded silicone, stainless steel, and plastic mess of them in a large bag and shoving that large bag into the hoary-deep recess under my bed.

My mom left on Sunday, the day of the wedding that wasn’t mine. The next day, or maybe the day after, I pulled the bag of toys and whatnot out from under my bed and put a few of said toys to their designated uses. After I’d reluctantly and begrudgingly come, I washed the toys, slipped the two of them—a sprightly new vibrator and a much beloved extra-large silicone dildo of color—into a small bag and dropped the small bag into the big bag that rested at the end of, no longer underneath, my bed.

On Thursday, I returned home from my long day out working my part-time job and saw that the scarlet velvet bag containing the extra-large dildo of color sitting on the floor, squat in the middle of my bedroom. Odd place for it, I thought, as I tossed it into the big bag of toys still gaping at the foot of my bed, and then I went about my evening.

And yet, the dildo out of place troubled me. It became a kind of Edgar Allen Poe tell-tale heart, beating, beating, beating a silent tattoo from the cushiony softness of its red velvet bag. I ate, I washed up, I watched some Buffy, I walked my dog, and still the dildo silently throbbed in my consciousness, the memory of it lying there disquietingly in the center of my floor glowing improbably like a great phallus-shaped blob of uranium dioxide. It troubled me, this tell-tale dildo.

Then it came to me in a hideous realization; an appalling vision swam before my eyes, as if I had been suddenly afflicted with prescience.

My dog, you see, has a history of eating things. Intimate things.

I saw my dog, home alone. I saw him perk up his ears, jump from the couch, turn around several times. I saw him freeze in happy anticipation. I saw a tiny thought cross his small, furry brain. I saw him run into my bedroom, and I saw him rout out the crimson bag with the dildo of color. I saw him take it in his mouth, and I saw him standing at the door, vibrating with excitement, dog-happy and prepared with a toy, waiting in complete readiness to delightedly, exuberantly and passionately greet his dogwalker, Marvin,

Then I saw Marvin. I saw him being greeted by my fervently happy dog, the red bag in his mouth. I saw Marvin see the bag. I saw Marvin see the dildo popping out of the bag. I saw Marvin’s realization dawn into horror. I saw him bend over and pick up the toy and its bag. I saw his tentative fingers and I saw his look of resignation crossed with…something. Revulsion? Fascination? (It’s dark in my mind’s eye; the lighting is not good.)  I saw him try not to touch the toy as he shook it gingerly back into its crimson bag, and I felt appreciation for Marvin’s pure professionalism as he undoubtedly tossed the whole sexual kit and caboodle in the general vicinity of my bedroom.

Now. Let’s say that Marvin didn’t see the dildo. Let’s suggest for one moment that there was some small mercy for me, and the extra-large dildo of color actually remained swathed in its chaste velveteen cocoon. There is still no way that Marvin touched the bag without knowing that it was a dildo. Nothing else feels like a dildo, except for a dick, and Marvin, for all of his debatable unfamiliarity with dildos, definitely has a dick. It’s not much of a win, really, for me to imagine that Marvin didn’t see the dildo; he unquestionably felt the dildo, and here, as in other cases, touch is all you, or I, or Marvin, need.

Which leaves me in an awkward position. Sure, I can say nothing, and I probably will. But the one thing that makes this all yet more problematic is that not only is my dildo a dildo of color, but my dogwalker is also a human of color. Which means that if my dogwalker saw the dildo, then he thinks that I have a thing for dick of a certain size, girth, and discernibly, if unrealistically, dark hue. And the thing is that I do not have a thing for dick of any particular hue—dick, as long as it’s a good size, of any color is fine with me. Red, yellow, black and white, all cock is precious in my sight.

No, the person who has a thing for dick of color would be Donny, my boyfriend/fiancé/X. He’s the one with the racial fetish, not me, and it’s because of him that when I purchased the much-beloved extra-large silicone dildo, I chose one in color. I only wanted to indulge my lover’s quasi-ethically-problematic race fetish, being that I don’t have one myself.

But just try telling that to Marvin. Or better yet, don’t.

on the other hand....

Sure, things may be sucking prodigiously with my disappearing boyfriend, and sure, my hopes of joining him in conjugal bliss--or any other form of bliss, really--may be dashed into pointy shards upon the matrimonial rocks, and sure, who knows when I'll be feeling like even contemplating the outer arenas of sex again, what with my libido hovering apparational-like somewhere just below the sub-basement, but on the other hand, two literary agents have contacted me in the past couple of weeks, and the book that I wrote the Introduction for is hott off the presses and available for public consumption.

Coming Together: For the Cure is now available both in e-book form and in happy-in-your-hand traditional book form. Its proceeds go to support the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Fund, so you can feel good all under about buying the book, reading it, and feeling good down under. It is, after all, erotica.

If you merely want to donate to the fund, go here. It's our special pass to pinkness in the name of For the Cure. Not yet swayed? Read the Erotic Readers and Writers Association review of the book. And if you're an aspiring erotica writer yourself, you can submit your passionate prose to the next beneficent book in the collection: Coming Together: With Pride, which will benefit HIV/AIDS research.

Hey, it's breast cancer awareness month. The very least you can do is enjoy a few altruistically motivated orgasms.

in an emotional noplace

Thank you all for caring about what's happening in my life with--or without--Donny. I find myself in this strange netherplace, sandwiched betwixt and between fear and love. It's an emotional utopia, dislodged from any pragmatic world; I can do nothing but sit with myself until this man I love figures out whether he really, really wants to be with me, or not.

We talked the other night, a long and somewhat elliptical conversation. Donny gave a more humane version of his narrative of my financial and professional issues, but it was essentially the same bunch of concerns lobbed with less venom. I listened, as I do. And then I waited to tell him this: that I love him, that I see him as he is with all his glories, banalities and faults, and that I accept him as he is. I told him that I wanted to be with a man who really, really wanted to be with me, and he had to decide whether he did, or not. And only once he had decided did we have anything to talk about.

The conversation didn't end then, of course. Donny countered my proclamation of unconditional love with a long string of all the shiny things I've done or said in the heat of anger. He lined them all up and he arrayed them in martial rows. Listening to his recounting of these moments when I'd lost control of myself, I almost saw him picking each one up and looking at it it lovingly. There, he seemed to say to himself, that is why I cannot really love her.

I am sad. I am disappointed. I am angry. I thought I knew this man better; I had believed him a better man. I do hold onto the slender hope that he will recognize what he is losing to his fears and wake up and smell the hottie, or if not that happy resolution, then I hope that he will at least recognize his own responsibility and not continue to shove it all onto my sturdy lap. In  the end, I hope that whatever happens to our relationship, that this man to whom I have unreservedly given my love shows himself to have been deserving of it. In the end, I hope that at least.

I don't know what's going to happen, but I'm not bludgeoning myself with fears or my doubts or my insecurities. I can see with a kind of severe clear vision that whatever it is that Donny is feeling or experiencing, it doesn't reflect on me. It's his own thing. And while I do have plenty I can take responsibility for, and lots I need to look at and eventually learn from, this particular quagmire of indecision, projection, fear and pain is not mine; it's his. It feels good to be solid in that knowledge. I may not get what I want, I may not be living the dream I'd envisioned, I may be faced with a whole bunch of new challenges I didn't want to face, but I'll be ok.

And that, frankly, is a feeling that centers me, even as I feel myself buffeted about by loss, and grief, and the keening sound of both.

cool tools for men: a brief if hott-making guide

I originally wrote this piece for Sexshop 365, a fabulous online retailer of sex toys in the U.K. (You can read my full list of articles for them here.) I wanted to republish it here to announce my affiliation with Black Label toys of Australia and the United States, a retailer of some seriously fine-ass high-end toys. If you visit Black Label toys, spend $200, and enter the order code "Chelsea Girl" in the promotional/comments box, you'll receive a free Kama Sutra Weekender Kit, pictured to the left. Think of me while you and your lover(s) lick Honeysuckle Dust off one another's naughty bits. And if you use my handy-dandy affiliate button on the lower right hand of this page, I'll get a sweet kickback too. It's win/win/win!

It’s a fact: Men love tools. Though to make the truism truer, it should be amended to note that “tools” need not be made by Stanley or Snap-On (however lovely these brands may be). I use the word “tools” capaciously here, not merely encompassing the noble power screwer or the humble hammer, but also the time-honored dildo, the electric vibrator, the insouciant butt plug. I believe that tools can make the man and so I offer to you this guide those of you who would like to be a little more adventuresome in building your love nest.

now on newsstands near you

The October issue of Penthouse is out this week, and my article on how to Dom it up in the bedroom, "Tough Love," is in it. It's just terribly exciting. I've had my writing in national magazines before, but none were quite this glossy nor quite this big. It's really rather groovy. And illustrated by a bunch of hott photos complete with nipples.

I've given you a partial screenshot of a pdf of the article (click to embiggen). If you want to read the whole she-bang, and I think you really should, you need to buy a copy of the magazine. I hope you like the article, and I hope you write both Penthouse's fabulously coiffed editor Mark Healy and me to tell us so.

My next article will be out in December's issue; it's currently called "How To Be a Moral Man-Whore," and I am very excited about it. I'll keep you all posted.

Now I'm off to my local vendor to proudly say, A copy of Penthouse, my good man, and make it snappy.

kissykiss,
chelsea g

bits, pieces and a small wet goddess

It's freaking hot in Gotham. Outside the tarmac shimmers like a rotten oasis; it makes me want to perform unnatural acts with innocent cubes of ice.

I wanted to take a break from this infernal heat and give rise to some potential internal calefaction. First, let's say you want to enjoy information on fellatio, but feel the need to challenge yourself by perusing said information in Italian.  You might want to go here. As anyone who has ever watched an Antoniono film or listened to an opera knows, everything sounds better in Italian. And if you're Italian-impaired, there's a helpful English translation that follows.

Second, Alison Kent is running a contest of sorts to promote Coming Together: For the Cure, an anthology that benefits the Susan G. Komen Foundation, and for which I wrote the Introduction. If you go to Alison's site and leave a comment, not only will you help raise funds for this cause, but you may also be a lucky winner of a copy. Drop by and say howdy.

Finally, after the break, there's a piece from the series I've been writing for the blog over at Sappho's Girls.  It's hott, it's cool, it's all-temperature erotic writing.

bibliotaphantastic!

Hi. My name is Chelsea G. and I am addicted to books.

Technically, and if I’m going to be surgically honest with myself, what I am is a bibliotaph. I’d like to consider myself more a bibliophile, a person who loves books, but really, what I am is a person who hoards them. (I suppose being a book hoarder is better than being a bibliophobe, one who fears books, and possibly better than being a bibliophage, literally one who eats them, metaphorically one who reads consumptively.) I may also be a bibliomaniac, one with an excessive fondness for reading and books, but really what I am at my core is an obsessive accumulator of books. I imagine my posthumous self in Dante's underworld eternally pushing a giant library cart overloaded with tomes, shouting Hoard Them! Hoard Them! into an infinite black void.

Last month, I decided my new intellectual obsession would be the demimondaine, that fringe society of courtesans and their men of fin-de-siècle Paris and London. I bought five books. I’ve read none of them. Last week, I bought seven new books: Elaine Dundy’s The Dud Avocado, which has been touted and introduced by my friend Terry Teachout; Volumes I and II of the graphic novel Ex Machina; Iggy Pop: Open Up and Bleed, a biography of the delectably scrawny rocker; M.F.K. Fisher’s Sister Age, a memoir by the great food writer that’s less about food; and Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth, another graphic novel that won all kinds of awards. (Oh, and my friend O has sent me two books, one of which I left on Fire Island, the other of which, Molly Keane's Good Behaviour, I'm reading now and enjoying. And of course I bought and read, twice, Harry Potter 7.)

I suppose in the interest of full disclosure I should also confess that I’ve also ordered, but not yet received, I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets: The Comics of Fletcher Hanks as well as the following DVDs: Blue Velvet (Special Edition); Finding Neverland; and Season One of Heroes. I also bought Cinderella: A Case Book, but that’s for teaching, so it hardly counts. And I suppose I should also admit that I bought Ghost World in both book and DVD forms, as well as Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Good Night and Good Luck, and Thank You For Smoking. Aside from a couple of other books (Peter Pan; The Engravings of Hogarth; The Selected Letters of Joyce; Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean, and Watchmen, another graphic novel. And also the first two seasons of Angel, as well as those of X-Files. And a subscription to The New Yorker.)

But that’s it, I swear. (Except I also bought a subscription to Vanity Fair, but that came with the subscription to The New Yorker, so it hardly counts.)

I should in this multi-media confessional also take this time to come clean about my recent iTunes shopping spree. I fell in love with Stars’ Set Yourself On Fire, and, really, who wouldn’t? That somehow led to my purchasing of Bat For Lash’s excellently eldritch Fur and Gold. In a mania of music, I also ended up buying a big fistful of Allman Brothers and Pink Floyd. I just felt guilty for never having given either band a chance. Which led to picking and choosing a few select 70’s gems like David Essex “Rock On” and Journey’s “Wheel In the Sky.” Watching Heroes, which I downloaded, made me buy a bunch of Rogue Wave, naturally; one could say it opened my eyes, if not my ears. Then yesterday I discovered Rodrigo Y Gabriela incendiary eponymous disc and bought it for myself. And also for two other friends. Which is pretty much all the music I've recently acquired. Except for the stuff I got from quasi-legal file sharing. But why mention it (Ben Lee’s Against Me! New Wave and all kinds of Yewknee)? It was free.

The thing of it is that sometimes I just get overwhelmed by the need for books (and DVDs and music). It’s as if without the weight of enough paper and bindings and that sweetly scented glue,  my tenuous connection to this mortal plane will fragment and dissolve. I will, unbalanced by a proper counterweight of media, become untethered from this spinning wet planet and, I fear, be flung into space. Sometimes I think it’s only books that keep me here.

You understand, then, my need to accumulate them, to pile them in teetering heaps on cases and on ledges, in piles next to my bed, on any flat surface, really. You can feel the fear, can you not, of what will happen to me if I don’t have anything new to read? You can sense, can you not, the great shuddering unfathomable blackness of being unable to find that right book when I need it? That best song? That perfect DVD? You know this untenable  experience of that particular existentialist crisis, I know you do.

There are others who do not. My boyfriend, for one. He has surveyed my apartment, my four book cases crammed from top to bottom with lovely, lovely, shiny spines of lovely, lovely books, and he has suggested the unthinkable. “Why don’t you get rid of some?” he has asked. “When was the last time you’ve read Wheelock’s Latin?” he has asked. While it has been some time, I admit, since I’ve opened Wheelock’s Latin, what if I should want to? What if tossed the book and then I needed to find out how to conjugate Edere or Fieri? Where would I be then? No, I cannot part with the book, as much as I loathe Latin, and I do.

My cupboards can be bare. My refrigerator may hold nothing but duck sauce and capers. My clothes closet may have nothing but stuff I wore in 1987. My bank account may run Sahara sere. But please don’t let me run out of books. Lovely, lovely, dusty, papery-smelling books. My bibliotherapy. My little friends, my little treasures, my precious.

rings of fire

Despite what had been reported in other blogs, I am not yet engaged. I am not disengaged, but actual ring-fingered engagement, like a wild and shy beast, eludes my outstretched hand. I stand on the brink of betrothal, under the lintel of affiancing, on the periphery of plighting my troth, as does my boyfriend, who, I suppose, upon fruition of said espousal, will cross the utopian terrain from being merely my boyfriend to being my Intended, my Betrothed, my Affianced, my Husband-To-Be.

A little over a week ago, my boyfriend Donny and I met with Barbara Klar, a jewelry designer of my choosing, to find our rings. It was an experience in equal strange measure both low key and surreal. Donny and I, along with DaisyDukes and La Stonée who were with us on Fire Island, met Barbara at an Arts and Crafts sale on Ocean Beach. The sun blazed. Girls in little d